Who is doing what social engineering?

Every too often somebody writes a letter to the editor complaining that public transit is “social engineering” and “taking our cars away”.  Have they considered that building all the freeways is social engineering?

How many people lost their houses to make way for the freeways?  How many neighborhoods were separated by freeways?  How many farmers had their land taken by imminent domain?  I know, I know!  It’s eminent domain but when your land is taken it is also imminent.  Aren’t these changes to city and country social engineering?

When the freeways are first built, it becomes much quicker for many people to drive than to take public transit.  More people drive instead of taking the bus, the bus service becomes less frequent for those who don’t drive.  So to save time, more people have to buy cars.  Isn’t this social engineering?

Remember “Field of Dreams” where Robert Redford was told, “Build it and they will come.”  Well, we build freeways and they come.  Soon a four-lane freeway has to become a six-lane freeway.  Soon the six-lane is clogged and has to become an eight-lane freeway.  Where are all the people going to live as the freeways get wider and wider?  Isn’t this social engineering?

For some reason those who complain about their cars “being taken away” don’t seem to realize that the more other people take public transit the more room there is for them on the freeways.

And actually, public transit should have dedicated lines or lanes right down the middle of every freeway.  I remember driving out of Chicago on I-90 on a Sunday afternoon.  It was stop and go in three lanes in my direction.  We would move a bit and a train would catch up to us.  Then we would move forward ahead of the train.  This went on for fifteen minutes or so and the pattern was reversed.  The train would pull ahead and we would catch up.  Eventually the train was long gone and we started and stopped, started and stopped.

When I grew up in Cleveland, we walked to neighborhood stores or took the streetcar downtown.  Now most neighborhood stores and downtown stores have been closed in favor of sprawling malls in the middle of nowhere.  Sometimes the lots are so big that it takes twice as long to walk from one’s car as it did to walk to the corner store.  Isn’t this social engineering?  And it was done without a public vote!

The irony is that most social engineering is done by corporations, not governments.  When a government does “social engineering” we might have an open debate about it.  When a corporation does “social engineering”, it is done behind closed doors and often by deceit.

In the Twentieth Century we as a nation were socially engineered by a man many of us never heard of – Edward Bernays.  A nephew of Sigmund Freud, he applied many of his uncle’s ideas to manipulation of public opinion.  Supposedly he believed that “public’s democratic judgment was ‘not to be relied upon’…’so they had to be guided from above.”

He worked in the Committee on Public Information during World War I.  One task was publicizing the idea that the U.S. involvement was “bringing democracy to all of Europe.”  We had a repeat of this use of “democracy” in our own times.  “The ill that men do lives after them…”  The success of “bringing democracy” surprised Bernays, and he wondered if similar propaganda could be used in peacetime.  Rather than call it propaganda, he labelled it “public relations”.

One of his first achievements was helping the tobacco industry break the taboo of women smoking in public.  He staged a big event in New York City in which models lit up Lucky Strike cigarettes or “Torches of Freedom”.  This promotion was not done as advertising but as news!  Smoking was giving women “freedom” and “liberty”.  Two more echoes in our time: “freedom” and “liberty” are smoke screens for doing what one damn well pleases without concern for the consequences for others.

Many Americans ate a light breakfast of coffee and maybe a roll or orange juice.  He arranged for letters being sent to 5,000 doctors asking if they thought Americans should have a bigger breakfast.  About ninety percent answered saying Americans should have bigger breakfasts.  This he had published as news in papers across the country.  In parallel, he had other articles published that bacon and eggs should be part of a larger breakfast.

He believed that we would have a utopia if the inner energies of individuals “could be harnessed and channeled by a corporate elite for economic benefit.”  This idea seems to be alive and well with all the corporate claims that they will create jobs and that environmental protection and safety rules will only take away jobs.

He wrote a paper called “Engineering of Consent”:  "Any person or organization depends ultimately on public approval, and is therefore faced with the problem of engineering the public's consent to a program or goal.”  Isn’t this a description of “social engineering”?

In many ways, Bernays was value-neutral.  He protected a play in 1913 that supported sex education.  He promoted fluoridation of water to help the aluminum industry sell a by-product of aluminum production.  He hosted the first NAACP convention in Atlanta, and there was no violence.  On the other hand, he inflated the threat of communism and was instrumental in the overthrow of the elected president of Guatemala.

For lots more on Bernays see Wikipedia and “Century of Self”, a four-part BBC series.  I hope these will help you be more skeptical of what anybody says for or against any idea.  Or as in “All the President’s Men”, “Follow the Money”.  Oh, and be skeptical of the attribution of this quote.  If you do so, you might inoculate yourself against “social engineering”.

Mel considers himself a gullible skeptic.

This was also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-05-21 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/05/21/5311_who_is_doing_what_social_engineering

You are being manipulated, lied to, and bamboozled! Here's how

So you think the U.S. has the best health care system in the world, that free enterprise made this country great and any government intervention stifles free enterprise, and you think that we don't have global warming but maybe climate change, then you are being manipulated, lied to, and bamboozled by the spin doctors of large corporations.  They are putting out big bucks in advertising to get us to see things their way and big bucks in campaign contributions and lobbying to have governments do things their way.  Forget, "We the People".

The writers of the U. S. Constitution used "people" in the sense of communities.  When they meant individuals they used "persons" or "citizens".  Large corporations don't want communities, whether they are unions, co-operatives, or any other group where people come together for their common economic interest.  They want isolated individuals to whom they can target their messages.

I've long suspected that corporate interests aren't my interests, or even many others interests, but I've become strongly aware of this after reading three books on corporate manipulation of us and our elected officials.

The first was "Deadly Spin" by Wendell Potter on how the health insurance companies work to minimize their payouts and maximize their profits, even if it gives bad health outcomes to their customers.  I have already written about this book; see "Benefits - Getting mad at the wrong people?"

The second is "23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism" by Ha-Joon Chang.  Chang's first Thing is "There is no such thing as a free market", that is individuals acting in their own best interest.  This free market idea simplifies individuals into economic entities without complex personalities.

The third is "Life, Inc., How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back" by Douglas Rushkoff.  His starting point is how limited liability corporations started and what they enabled.  Like any good idea, this has morphed into a monster that "The People" can't control.

If you can stomach reading about the manipulations, you might find these books very informative and fascinating.  If you're reading this blog, you probably see the world as a more complex place than the spin doctors would have us believe.  These books might give you more information to counter the spin doctors.  If you think the world is relatively simple, then please read these books before you vote again.